The ‘Baywatch’ movie spoofs the TV show’s cliches — but has that become its own cliche?
THE funniest scene in the new ‘ Baywatch' movie comes at the very beginning, when Mitch Buchannon, the leader of an elite team of lifeguards, takes his place atop the stand with the alertness and prideful countenance of a bald eagle. He notices a shift in the wind, which sends a yellow caution flag whipping to the left. He looks to the sky. A parasail lurches backwards. Immediately sensing catastrophe, he dashes full speed across the beach, calculating the parachute's precise trajectory as it heads towards a line of rocks jutting into the ocean.
Mere moments after the occupant lands in the water, smacks his head and loses consciousness, Mitch scoops him up and cradles him in his massive arms like a newborn. As Mitch, Dwayne Johnson emerges from the water like Poseidon himself, with chiselled features glistening in the sun. A wave crests in the background as the title, ‘ Baywatch', fills the screen in giant block letters. A pod of dolphins pirouette in formation behind him, popping off like a fireworks display. The image couldn't be any tackier if it were airbrushed on the side of a van or printed on T- shirts at a boardwalk gift shop.
In short order, director Seth Gordon (‘ Horrible Bosses') and his screenwriters, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, have made it abundantly clear that their ‘ Baywatch' will be irreverent, cool and knowing — everything that the longrunning syndicated TV show was not. They snicker at the absurdity of “an elite team of lifeguards” patrolling the beach like superheroes in spandex. They snicker at Mitch's “Lassie”-like instincts for danger and the absurd, outsize perfection of his body, which resembles a Humvee emerging from a carwash. And most of all, they snicker at the very idea of a ‘Baywatch' movie, which is almost too stupid to contemplate.
Their instincts are correct: ‘Baywatch' was a bad television show, a stultifying hour of stock plotting and aquatic derringdo that nonetheless thrived in syndication, due to the appeal of its stars, David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, and its “jiggle TV” prurience. But over 11 seasons and three direct-to-video movies, the show infiltrated the culture, and for risk- averse Hollywood, it's usually a safe bet to cash in on existing properties. Attempting a straightforward, big-budget version of ‘Baywatch' would be commercial suicide, so instead, the filmmakers treat it like a piece of cultural flotsam that has washed up on the shore. The tone is affectionate parody, appealing to a certain couchpotato self-awareness. That knowing attitude is key to turning small- screen dross into big- screen gold, and it has become a successful formula of its own.
A quintessentially ‘ 70s show like ‘ The Brady Bunch' would seem woefully out of date two decades later, so ‘ The Brady Bunch Movie' turned that fact into an ingenious premise, casting the family as cheerfully oblivious relics in the modern world. ‘Charlie's Angels', too, could not survive the sexism inherent in three female private eyes responding to the whims of a disembodied male voice, so it made a joke out of the skimpy costumes and martial arts. Few people remember ‘ 21 Jump Street' as more than an early springboard for Johnny Depp, but the concept of young undercover cops infiltrating high schools and colleges was enough to revivify the series to hilarious effect.
These films aren't the first to trade on self- awareness and pop- culture savvy. A line could be traced from Buster Keaton stepping on and off the screen in “Sherlock Jr.” to the commercial fizz and meta- comedy of Frank Tashlin classics such as ‘ Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?', which played with the audience's knowledge of TV advertising and celebrity. Then there's the more recent standard set by the ‘Wayne's World' movies, which would often break the fourth wall and speak directly to the camera. When Wayne and Garth, the hosts of a cable access show, decry selling out to their corporate boss while running through spots for Pizza Hut, Doritos and Reebok, it's the perfect synthesis of product and products. Just that little wink to the audience makes all the difference. On top of the throwback subplots and the obligatory cameos from the original stars, comedies such as ‘ The Brady Bunch Movie', ‘Charlie's Angels', ‘21 Jump Street' and ‘Baywatch' all have the same little wink, that moment when the film hips the audience to its own fundamental silliness. In ‘ 21 Jump Street', the deputy chief explains the operation to his young recruits thusly: “We're reviving a cancelled undercover police programme f rom the ‘ 80s and revamping it for modern times.”